


Stop This Heartbreak Overload

by allypsis



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cora is in South America, Derek Hale Misses Stiles Stilinski, I listened to "Missing You" a lot while I was writing this, M/M, Pining Derek, Road Trips, bc Tina Turner is a goddess, but not the John Waite version the Tina Turner version, gratuitous descriptions of northern California, so that explains the title okay because I can't title for shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6458845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allypsis/pseuds/allypsis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek sees reminders of Stiles everywhere he goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop This Heartbreak Overload

“Well, I guess at least this time we get a warning before you disappear.”

Derek had heard him coming, heard the rumble of the Jeep from blocks away, the slam of the door, the angry comment at the For Sale sign outside of the building. Had heard Stiles work himself up into a frustrated rant in the elevator up, his heart going too fast, his mutterings even faster.

Still, his shoulders tense when the door slides open with a slam. Derek doesn’t turn around and look at him when Stiles spat his words out, keeps carefully placing his books in a box.

“You aren’t even going to say anything, huh? Of course you’re not. I should have guessed you’d leave town, since your _girlfriend_ took off.” There’s a hint of bitterness there that gives Derek pause. Stiles is winding himself tight, feet worrying the floor thin with their back and forth pace. “Well let me tell you something, buddy. This time, we’re not coming after you. If something happens,” his voice warbles a little. Derek doesn’t need to look to see what expression Stiles has on his face. He can picture it clearly every time he closes his eyes, wide-eyed and terrified, although Derek guesses Stiles’s mouth will be pinched shut if he does turn around, “we’re not going to come running to your rescue, okay?”

Derek stands up slowly, turns around. “Braeden’s not my girlfriend. It wasn’t like that.”

He was right about Stiles’s expression, although now it’s angrier; he’s squinting at him with a jutted out jaw, eyes bright, furied slits. “That’s what you’re going to respond to? _That?_ ”

“Stiles,” Derek sighs, takes a step forward and frowns a little when Stiles jerks back. Stiles never flinches from him. Stiles gets in his face and yells at him. Derek tries again, Stiles does it again. “Stiles.” Derek says it sharper, impatient. “You’re angry.”

“Oh, give a prize to the werewolf!” Stiles nearly shouts, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’m angry. Tell me, Derek, is it my chemosignals that are telling you that? My heart rate too high? Huh?”

“You’re not letting me touch you.”

Stiles deflates in shock, and there, there’s that wide-eyes, opened mouth, flushed cheeks look that Derek remembers from back when they first met. His cheeks aren’t as chubby, his hair is longer, but it’s so familiar that Derek’s lips twitch.

Stiles, of course, don’t miss it, and his feathers ruffle all over again. “You’re an asshole. I’m glad you’re leaving, I’m sick of having to save your life every other week.”

It’s not true. Derek knows it’s not true, hears it in the stuttering of Stiles’s heart, the falter in his voice. It scraps over ‘save your life’ like an engine on a street grate.

It still hurts, a little.

“I’m going to miss you.” He doesn’t want to fight with Stiles, so Derek decides to be honest with him, for once.

“Oh, no, no.” Stiles shakes his head. “You don’t get to do that.” The finger he points at Derek is accusatory, but there’s a sheen of tears in his eyes. “You don’t get to miss me. You know what? You don’t even get to say goodbye. You want to leave, then go ahead and leave. I don’t care.”

Stiles doesn’t bother closing the door behind him. Derek doesn’t bother going after him.

He’s leaving. This…thing…that’s always been there, between him and Stiles, it’s not a nerve that needs exposing.

Derek closes the door when he hears the Jeep start, resting his forehead against it for a moment, and then goes back to packing up his books.

***

Derek heads south. The Camaro had smelled a little stale, when Derek got in it, but with the windows down and the curve of the steering wheel under his palms, he finds himself not caring. It’s good to be driving it again.

He hits San Francisco as the sky is just starting to lighten, crosses a Golden Gate bridge that has almost no traffic. Derek holds his breath as he drives through the tunnel, the way he did when he was a kid. The streets are unfamiliar, but Derek navigates them easily enough, occasionally shouting at the GPS on his phone. He parks the Camaro on the side of the street on the Great Highway, leaves his shoes in the car and walks down to Ocean Beach, sits just above the waterline as the sun comes up behind him, watching the waves lap at the sand.

Derek doesn’t think about Stiles then, but he does later, strolling into Golden Gate park. He comes at it from the Haight side, coming through the gates and down the hill. There’s a sign posted that says no smoking, but there are two girls off to one side, sitting in the trees, lazily curled up together and passing a joint back and forth. One of them, the brunette, throws her head back at something the blonde says, laughing, and a dangling Batman earring sways by the crook of her jaw.

Derek turns around and leaves. He’s out of the city before the end of the hour.

***

There’s a kid with a buzzcut in a plaid flannel shirt sipping at an icee, leaning against the window of the 7-Eleven where Derek stops to get something to eat. He watches Derek enter the store with interest and the faintest hint of arousal. Derek’s jaw clenches, he reaches up and rubs at it, pretending to debate between types of Rice Krispie treats. In the end, he buys a bottle of water.

The kid’s gone when he comes out of the store.

***

In Arizona, there’s a sign outside of a movie theater that’s clearing been abandoned, saying that Revenge of the Sith is playing.

***

Cora welcomes him with an awkward hug, patting his back a little too hard. Derek looks down at her nervous smile and thinks he probably won’t stay long. She’s got a life, and it doesn’t include him outside of the texts they’ve been exchanging since he dropped her off there a few months ago.

But her couch is comfortable, her apartment bright and clean. She has a few birds that make too much noise, living out on her patio in cages, and she sleeps with the windows open. Cora hums when she cooks, and they trade Spanish until Derek stops feeling like he’s a little rusty at it. A few days turn into a week, turns into a month, and Derek doesn’t think about Stiles except for in the darkest morning hours, staring at the ceiling and listening to Cora’s soft breathing in her bedroom, the birds with their occasion squawk.

He wonders if Stiles would take an _I miss you_ now

***

Six months after he shows up at Cora’s, Derek glances at the calendar on her wall and realizes, with a jolt, that it’s Stiles’s birthday. He’s eighteen.

There’s a little market a few blocks from the apartment, more a convenience store than anything substantial. The tourists like it because they have things like maps in English. Maps, and greeting cards.

Derek picks out one with a pug in a birthday hat and a noisemaker in his mouth, because there isn’t much of a selection. It just says HAPPY BIRTHDAY inside. When he gets it home, he sits at the kitchen table with a pen in his hand.

There’s nothing to say that Stiles wants to hear. Derek sets the pen down, crumples up the card with more claw than he should, tosses it into the garbage. Hours later, when he’s come back from his run, he pulls it out and smooths it as best as he can.

Between the HAPPY and the BIRTHDAY, he adds, ^18th!, signs his name. Puts it in the mailbox without a return address in the morning.

A week later, he leaves Cora with a promise to come back soon, and drives north.

***

North turns into Northwest without Derek making a conscious decision. He’d thought about Wisconsin, New York. Places familiar but without too much taint. He still goes west.

He takes his time, driving. He’s not going back to Beacon Hills. The _ever_ is less certain than it was when he left, but it’s still there. Derek doesn’t want to. He’s not…ready.

At the China Flat museum in Willow Creek, he buys a postcard of what is supposedly Bigfoot’s footprint, I’M A BELIEVER in big red letters under it, pins it under his visor. Derek’s not sure why he buys it, but he can see Stiles getting a kick out of it, so maybe that’s why.

After Willow Creek, Derek spends a week camping at Shasta Lake, swimming out to the little islands that dot it, jogging through it in the mornings and evenings. He makes friends with the group at the next campsite over, and they share their hot dogs and beer with him. Every night is a haze of smoke from the barbecue, every day bright and warm.

“You wanna join me in my tent?” One of the girls asks him on what ends up being his last night there. She’s got an upturned nose, freckles, eyes like gingerbread. Her hair’s too dark, and her mouth isn’t full enough. Derek gently pushes her off of him.

“No,” Derek says, “sorry.”

The next morning, he leaves before they start to stir in their tents, packed up and ready to go. There’s a diner in Redding where he stops for tea and wins a furry green monkey from a machine. He gives it to a little boy with a missing front tooth and a Bat signal on his t-shirt as he leaves.

***

Bodega Bay is what all beaches ought to be like. This is what Derek thinks with his knees drawn up to his chest. He’s not actually down at the beach, parked at the Miwok inlet and walked along the side of the road until he reached a cliff with a path down it. It loops around to the front of it, and there’s a small area just big enough for maybe three people to stand without being seen from the road. Derek sits there, watching the sun shimmer on the water, listening to the gulls call to each other lazily. There are shrieking children down below, and a young woman in a red hoodie who almost goes under trying to fill a jar with water. She loses her flipflop. Derek watches a ranger approach her, scolding her, from the looks of it, although his words are lost to the wind. There’s sign Derek passed, warning about the dangerous surf of the beach, and Derek guesses that’s why she’s being scolded.

As soon as the ranger’s gone, her friend is at the waterline, and Derek guesses that he’s found her other flipflop, because she throws herself into his arms after he holds something up.

Derek leaves shortly thereafter, stops to have lunch at the Tides. He goes to the cafe, not into the restaurant, and eats his burger outside. There’s a giftshop, and Derek buys another postcard, this one of the Potter Schoolhouse. On his way back inland, he drives by the place.

Glen Ellen has the Jack London State Historic Park, which consists of the author’s home and several trails that are rumored to be haunted. Derek spends the day there, pokes around the Wolf House, leaves with a copy of The Valley of the Moon and another postcard. It has the park’s logo, a picture of a wolf, on it, and Derek smiles as it joins the other two under his visor.

There’s a redwood forest in a town called Guerneville by the Russian River. It’s called Armstrong Woods, and they filmed parts of Star Wars there. Derek thinks Stiles would probably love it. Would probably lose his shit. He stretches out on one of the benches in the outdoor amitheater, arms tucked under his head, staring at the canopy above him.

 _I miss you_ , he thinks. He wonders if Stiles has forgiven him enough, yet, to hear it.

***

Somehow, he ends up with an apartment in Sacramento.

It’s been almost a year since Derek left Beacon Hills. The knowledge is itching under his skin, the worst sort of hives. Derek ignores it, has his belongings shipped from the storage unit he left them in. He takes a picture of the place, sends it to Cora with a not so subtle message about two bedrooms. Just in case.

The air is muggy, too hot for spring, even the tail end of it. Derek walks the streets of Old Sacramento, making his way to his favorite cafe, when he hears it.

Even after a year, the heartbeat is so familiar that Derek’s ears pick it out of the crowd without Derek even thinking about it. Stiles is coming out of the Candy Barrel, clutching a bag in one hand, looking both ways before crossing the street, to the side Derek is on. He doesn’t think he’s seen him, yet. Derek’s not sure that he wants him to.

It turns out that he doesn’t have a choice, because Stiles does spot him, then. Spots him and drops his bag onto the cement, penny candy spilling everywhere.

_“Derek?”_

“Stiles.” Derek shoves his hands in his pocket, proud of the fact that his voice was steady. His name is all Derek gets out, because suddenly Stiles has his arms around him, and is squeezing him tight enough that Derek almost can’t breathe.

It takes a few seconds, but slowly, Derek’s arms wrap around him too.

***

“Sheriff’s Training Academy,” Stiles tells Derek, curled up on his couch. He takes the mug that Derek hands him, sips at the tea and then wrinkles his nose, sets it on the coffee table. “It was my dad’s idea, really.”

“I could see that,” Derek says as he settles in next to him. After a moment of eye contact, Stiles stretches his legs out, plopping them in Derek’s lap. At least he still has socks on. Still, the hand not holding his own mug curls around one of Stiles’s ankles. “Is that what you want?”

Stiles opens his mouth, closes it again, shrugs a little. “It’s what my dad wants. And…it gets me out of Beacon Hills, I guess.”

Derek wants to ask, but he’s not sure how much of Stiles’s happiness at seeing him again has burnt through his anger at Derek for leaving in the first place. Instead he squeezes Stiles’s ankle. “Well, Sac State’s not a bad school, if you change your mind.”

“You know from experience?” Stiles isn’t looking at his face; his eyes are wide and dark on Derek’s hand, and he licks his lips. Derek’s mouth is a little dry, so he takes a sip of his tea before he answers.

“I’m enrolled for the fall,” he admits. It causes Stiles’s eyes to finally meet his. “I only have a few classes left before I get my degree, maybe two semesters worth.”

“And then what?”

Derek presses his thumb against the jut of bone under it, rubs little circles against it through the cotton of the sock that covers it. “I guess I’ll see what happens,” he says, setting his tea down.

After that, they don’t speak much at all until the moon is high in the sky, casting shadows on Stiles’s skin that Derek wants to chase with his tongue. Stiles has their hands entwined.

“I missed you,” Derek says, finally, words he’s been holding in for too long, words that are only half of what he wants to say. Stiles turns his head, gives him a sleepy smile, tugs him down for a kiss so that he can mumble his words into Derek’s mouth.

“I know exactly what you mean.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think!


End file.
